by Chiara Cavalglieri
Fraudsters posing as your bank invent bogus reasons for you to share personal details, provide security codes, give them remote access to your device, or transfer money to an account they control.
New tools are being launched by banks to combat these types of scams. We examine the best anti-scam measures and which banks are offering them.
Which banks offer caller verification?
Nationwide says members can now instantly confirm whether a call they’re on is genuine through their banking app. They simply open the app, go to ‘more’, and ‘call checker’, and the screen will display either ‘You’re on a call with [name]’ or ‘You’re not on a call with us.’
Barclays, Monzo, Revolut and Starling all offer similar tools to help customers identify phone scammers as follows:
- Barclays: If someone calls claiming to be from Barclays, you can ask them to send a secure notification to your Barclays app via ‘app ID’.
- Monzo and Starling: Look for ‘call status’ warnings to see if someone from the bank is genuinely on the phone to you or not (Monzo shows this under its security settings, Starling within the payment screen).
- Revolut: Its new ‘we are not talking to you’ feature automatically detects if you are on a call when you open the app and flags whether or not you are talking with a Revolut agent. You can also hang up and use the in-app call feature to reach support securely.
If in doubt, call 159
If you’re with another provider and you receive a call from your bank, you can call 159 instead. When you call the number, you’ll hear an automated message asking you which bank you would like to be connected to. Staff will then confirm if the call was genuine, or a scam.
Participants include The Co-operative Bank, Danske Bank, Chase, First Direct, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Metro Bank, NatWest, Santander and TSB (calls are usually included in your monthly minutes).
Banks using AI to help you spot scams
Some banks are also using artificial intelligence to help customers assess whether something is likely to be a scam before any money is lost.
The Metro Bank scam checker is powered by an AI company called Ask Silver, although anyone (not just Metro customers) can take a photo or screenshot of a suspicious email, website, letter or leaflet and share it with Ask Silver online or via WhatsApp (add 07700153424 to your WhatsApp contact list and save it as Metro Bank Scam Checker) to ask the chatbot if it’s likely to be dodgy.
Metro Bank says it will never initiate conversations with you via the scam checker tool online or WhatsApp.
Starling has offered its own AI-powered scam detection tool since November 2025, which aims to protect customers from purchase scams – the most common type of authorised push payment (APP) fraud.
Its scam intelligence tool analyses marketplace ads to detect scam signs in seconds. Customers simply upload images of items, online marketplace ads, or even messages with sellers, and the tool will highlight red flags that suggest they are at risk of being scammed.
For example, if you wanted to buy a high-value item from Facebook Marketplace, the scam intelligence tool might tell you that the price is suspiciously low, or too good to be true. Or, it might reveal that the product image is fake or stolen from somewhere else.
Find out more: how safe is online banking?